Perugia – It was 1505 when the Poor Clares of the Monteluce monastery, in Perugia, asked Raphael to create a large altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria Assunta. THE’Coronation of the Virgin it reached its destination only in 1525, after long waits and broken contracts. Raphael has been missing for five years and the work was completed by his most trusted pupils, Giulio Romano And Giovan Francesco Penni. For almost three centuries the altarpiece will illuminate the Perugian church, until
when Napoleon, conquered by the art of the master from Urbino, ordered his emissaries to appropriate it to transfer it to France during the infamous requisitions. The commitment of Antonio Canova, Bonaparte’s favorite sculptor and diplomat to the Holy See, will succeed in bringing the Madonna of Montelucewhich however will no longer return to Perugia and will become part of the pontifical collections, later joining the Vatican Art Gallery.
500 years after its entry into the city and over 200 years after its departure, theCoronation of the Virgin returns to Perugia for the first time on the occasion of the 2025 Jubilee with the collaboration of the Vatican Museums. From tomorrow, Wednesday 1 October, until 7 January 2026 it will be possible to admire it at the Museum of the Chapter of the Cathedral of San Lorenzofinally reunited with hers predella with the Scenes from the life of Marykept instead at the National Gallery of Umbria. “It was a challenge to move a masterpiece of such an imposing format (354 x 232 cm, ed.), which in forty years had never been removed from the Vatican Art Gallery,” he says Francesca Persegatiuntil a few weeks ago responsible for Painting restoration laboratory in the Vatican Museumswho has this work
dedicated the last year and a half of his career. “The painting, a truly unique detail, is composed from its origin by two parts that can be assembled and dismantled“, he explains. The Assumption and the Coronation thus merge into a single moment of glory and hopewhich well represents the motto of the Jubilee 2025, “Pilgrims of Hope”. The most recent studies have made it possible to define with reasonable certainty the authorship of both tables. The upper one, where Christ crowns the Virgin in the dazzling light of Paradise, would be attributable to Raphael and Giulio Romano; the lower one, in which the Apostles discover a flowery tomb where there is no longer any trace of Mary’s body. The power of iconography is amplified by color palette in a game of harmonies and contrasts: between the golden light and the leaden blue of the sky, between the composed grace of the crowned Virgin and the amazement of men in front of the flowers grown in her coffin.
“This is an important return for a shovel that reaffirms the role of Perugia as the capital of the Renaissance”, he said the director of the Vatican Museums Barbara Jattaunderlining the link of the Coronation of the Virgin with other masterpieces from the Vatican collections linked to the last phase of the Urbino: “The Hall of Constantineof which we have recently completed the complete restoration, certainly has a very close relationship with the Pala di MonteluceIn both cases, the contribution of the “boys who remain orphans of Raphael, but who have autonomy, an extraordinary ability, proves to be fundamental. We think of Giulio Romano, of Giovanni Francesco Penni, of those artists who after the Sack of Rome carried Raphael’s legacy throughout Italy and to European courts such as Fontainebleau”. Crucial moments “to understand that extraordinary period of the arts represented by the pontificates of Julius II, Leo
Carlo Franza